Plundering the Heavens

The remainder of the night was spent on digesting the Demon Pellet using the strange scripture Fang Xing had learned from his dreams. Fang Xing could feel that upon its completion, his cultivation tier had jumped from the start of the second tier up to the peak, leaving him only one step away from breaking through into tier three.

Despite this, he had wasted quite a large amount of the pellet’s Qi at the beginning because of the improper use. Even then, no matter how miraculous these pellets might be, it was impossible to truly bind all of the Qi of a third tier beast into a single pellet; there would always be wastage, whether it was in the form of evaporated Qi or as castoff second-rate pellets that were formed when it was crafted.

Still, to achieve the peak of tier two within a single night was in itself a miracle.

The smell in Fang Xing’s cottage was unbearable, and the stench had managed to find its way into every single corner of the room.

Early morning, the entire valley was empty save for a cheerful, plump Taoist. “Shidi Fang! I found some really good wine today to share with—” as Yu pushed open the door, he took a few steps back as the smell immediately assaulted his nose, “—what is this smell? Shidi Fang, did you… wet the bed?”

As Fang Xing cleared his mind from deep meditation at Yu’s entrance, he couldn’t help but to let out a startled cry.

—

On the east side of the Qinsi Valley was a small lake formed by a cluster of streams. Gentle ripples filled the jaded lake, the area secluded and extremely pleasant.

Fang Xing was swimming under the crystal clear water. Without warning, he resurfaced before spitting out a mouthful of water and looked up at the plump Taoist frantically rubbing Fang Xing’s robes for him. At the sight of Fang Xing’s face, Yu winked his bean-sized eyes at him as though he were hinting at something.

Fang Xing yelled out, “I will kill you if you mention another thing about bedwetting!” Amidst the yell, Fang Xing dived back into the water again; it was beyond embarrassing to Fang Xing for Yu to have witnessed such a sight.

One thing he was certain of, however, was that he did not in fact wet his bed… though he wasn’t exactly sure what it was on his bed, either. The thought of Yu saying “of course you didn’t wet your bed” while having that meaningful grin on his face was more than enough to make Fang Xing want to give a couple of kicks to his face.

“Shidi Fang, I know you didn’t wet your bed, but did you really need to bathe for four hours?” Once Yu had finally finished washing Fang Xing’s robes, he placed them on the lawn to be dried while he waved at Fang Xing. The robe had needed Yu to rinse and wash three times, while Fang Xing himself had washed in the lake all morning.

Even up to now, Yu couldn’t help but laugh at the thought of an embarrassedly blushing Fang Xing. To be able to see the little monster in such a state was clearly a rare sight.

At last, Fang Xing came out of the water, gritting his teeth as he waved his first towards Yu. “You stupid fatty! If you tell anyone about this, you’ll be as good as dead!”

“Of course I won’t.” Pretending to show some compassion, Yu held back his chuckle. “Hurry and come eat something, your robes still need to be dried for a bit longer. Your bedsheet and blanket has to go now and you should get a new set. I also lit up some incense in your room to get rid of the stench. Uh… actually, maybe just wait here; I don’t think anyone will be able to enter the room for now.”

Fang Xing held up the wine jug for a quick drink and took a large chicken drumstick into his mouth before returning to the water once more. This time, he was floating on the surface while staring blankly into the sky.

‘What exactly happened last night?’

After a long night, Fang Xing had woken up at the peak of tier two. ‘The revered spirit’s scripture, the words from my dreams… is this some sort of really powerful ancient manual?’

Fang Xing moved his lips as he swallowed his drumstick, a fuzzy warmth felt inside his stomach. It seemed that everything was the same as usual except for the speed he digested the meat, which felt to be even faster.

It had all been nothing more than a dream… except his cultivation had indeed increased!

The script was still imprinted clearly in his head, yet when he tried to activate it once more, nothing happened.

Another hour passed before Fang Xing finally decided he had done enough soaking. His skin was now puffy and pale, in stark contrast to his now-dried robe. After wrapping himself in the clean clothing, he devoured all of the meat and wine from Yu before returning to his cottage.

Everything inside the room had been thrown away and the bedsheets and blankets had been changed with fresh ones. It took another two rounds of incense to finally clean the air to livable standards.

By nightfall, Fang Xing could feel that the progression he gained from practicing fluctuations with Spirit Stones was no longer fast enough to satisfy him. Thinking on the transformation from the night before, Fang Xing started to guess as to some of the possibilities: ‘Maybe if I use Demon Pellets instead, the speed will be much faster? Perhaps this… “Scripture of the Revered Spirit” was made for converting pellets of demons and beasts into Qi for humans?’

At this thought, Fang Xing became slightly frustrated and scratched his ears. ‘Where the hell do I find more Demon Pellets?’

Unable to answer his own question, Fang Xing let go of those thoughts and continued to practice with his Spirit Stones instead.

—

After Hou Qing had been scammed, he began to set off quite a bit of news. Though he revealed nothing about his own experience, per se, rumor still had it that Hou Qing had found out about the person who had robbed the first Black Market and had drawn a portrait of the thief after claiming to have seen his face. Hou Qing along with a few outer court shixiong had been trying to find the thief.

Since it was related to the Black Market, searches could not be conducted out in the open, yet none of the department heads or valley heads of the outer court had made any effort to stop them. As such, Hou Qing had been going to every single valley and cottage with his group of men in search of the thief.

Even Fang Xing’s cottage had not escaped the search, although as soon as they saw that it was a child inside, they left without further questioning. Hou Qing didn’t even recognize that Fang Xing was the child he had caught at the Recruiting Ceremony half a year ago; now that Fang Xing was cleaned and dressed, he looked rather different from when he was in rags, after all.

The searches had eventually ended a month later with no success. Fang Xing’s cultivation had also made no inch of improvement, still stuck at the peak of tier two. Even after consuming a large number of Spirit Stones, there were no signs of breakthrough, and this left Fang Xing very clearly disheartened.

On the path to immortality, to go from each tier and stage was to overcome a limit. The first time he had broken through, Fang Xing had forced large amounts of Qi to destroy the shackles, but the same could no longer be done after his cultivation had improved. Now that the Qi contained inside him was as vast as a small lake, it would be at least three times more difficult to do the same thing as he had before.

A breakthrough would require either extensive preparation from both the body and the soul, or Qi forces as strong as a large river crashing its waves repeatedly at the bottleneck until it finally shattered.

Neither methods were realistic options for Fang Xing right now. The only thing he could do was refrain from giving into his temper and focus on building his foundations step by step. Fortunately, the Spirit Stones from Hou Qing were real, and he still had five left and after sending a total of thirty away to Hua for forging the powder. Adding the remainders from before, they would last him for some time.

Such a peaceful life did not last long.

—

Another month later, Fang Xing had a surprising visitor.

It was none other than Hou Qing himself!

When Fang Xing saw who the visitor was, the first thing that passed through his mind was that Hou Qing had finally found out the true identity of the Black Market thief. Fang Xing was even prepared to fight for his life before realizing that someone else was also with Hou Qing: Shixiong Liu, an old enemy. Liu was limping behind Hou Qing, still not completely healed from his destroyed tendons.

Liu looked at Fang Xing without good intentions and had a twisted smile on his face as though to hint at something.

“Shixiong Hou, this is the D-Ranked shidi I’ve talked about. He would be the perfect person for this.” Liu beamed as he gestured towards Fang Xing.

“What’s your tier right now?” Hou Qing focused on Fang Xing as he locked his brows.

It was hard for someone in the Spirit Stage to see another person’s tier at a glance, unless the other person was cooperative for the check or it was during a battle where all of their Qi had been activated. Normally, it would be possible to tell as much as whether the other person was in the early, mid, or late tiers of the Spirit Stage, but the subtle differences between each tier were not obvious to the naked eye.

Even though Hou Qing was at the peak of tier three, there was no way he would be able to see through Fang Xing’s tier directly.

‘Liu you son of a bi*ch, what do you want by bringing Hou Qing here?’ Without showing any visible signs of hatred, Fang Xing cursed inwardly while pretending to be afraid of Hou Qing. “Spirit Stage… Spirit Stage, tier one.”

With his brows still locked, Hou Qing turned towards Liu. “Rather low!”

At this, Liu smiled. “Shixiong Hou, if we’re looking for a helping hand, it is too low. However….”

Immediately understanding the meaning behind Liu’s smile, Hou Qing relaxed his brows and smiled as well. “Indeed, you are right!”

Hou Qing then turned to Fang Xing. “I’ve recently accepted a Duty Talisman from the sect for a mission. Would you like to come with me? If you do, there will be a lot of benefits: on top of the sect rewards, I will also thank you personally!”

‘Duty Talisman?’ At first, Fang Xing had been confused, but then he knew exactly what was going on.

In order for Hou Qing to break into tier four, the only way was to consume the Poji Pellet, and this was exactly the reason he had been wanting to exchange his Demon Pellet for Ore Essence Powder a couple of months ago. However, thanks to Fang Xing, he had not only lost his Demon Pellet but he did not get the powder he wanted, either. The only option left to him now was to accept Duty Talismans in exchange for Ore Essence Powder upon successful completion.

Nevertheless, Fang Xing did not believe the promise of “a lot of benefits”. If the missions required by Duty Talismans were so beneficial and easy, he would not have wanted to trade for or buy the powder in the first place. Besides, the fact that Hou Qing had still wanted Fang Xing after he had mentioned his low tier was more concerning than everything else. Someone in tier one would not have been helpful at all in a sect mission.

It was also Liu who had introduced him to Hou Qing. Why would Liu be so kind-hearted towards a former enemy?

“Tha— Thank you, Shixiong, but I feel that I am still too weak for this. I really don’t want to cause any inconveniences for Shixiong.” Fang Xing cautiously continued to pretend to be afraid of Hou Qing.

“That’s not a problem at all, kiddo. What happened to your viciousness? I’m sure Shixiong Hou will look after you real good!” Liu laughed, denying Fang Xing’s rejection of the offer.